A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.
When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the glare,
There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.
He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength
of a louse,
Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks
for the house.
There was none could place the stranger's face, though we searched ourselves
for a clue;
But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.
There's men that somehow just grip your eyes, and hold them hard like a spell;
And such was he, and he looked to me like a man who had lived in hell;
With a face most hair, and the dreary stare of a dog whose day is done,
As he watered the green stuff in his glass, and the drops fell one by one.
Then I got to figgering who he was, and wondering what he'd do,
And I turned my head -- and there watching him was the lady that's
known as Lou.
His eyes went rubbering round the room, and he seemed in a kind of daze,
Till at last that old piano fell in the way of his wandering gaze.
The rag-time kid was having a drink; there was no one else on the stool,
So the stranger stumbles across the room, and flops down there like a fool.
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
Then he clutched the keys with his talon hands -- my God! but that man
could play.
Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear;
With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,
A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;
While high overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights swept in bars? --
Then you've a hunch what the music meant. . . hunger and night and the stars.
And hunger not of the belly kind, that's banished with bacon and beans,
But the gnawing hunger of lonely men for a home and all that it means;
For a fireside far from the cares that are, four walls and a roof above;
But oh! so cramful of cosy joy, and crowned with a woman's love --
A woman dearer than all the world, and true as Heaven is true --
(God! how ghastly she looks through her rouge, -- the lady that's
known as Lou.)
Then on a sudden the music changed, so soft that you scarce could hear;
But you felt that your life had been looted clean of all that it once
held dear;
That someone had stolen the woman you loved; that her love was a devil's lie;
That your guts were gone, and the best for you was to crawl away and die.
'Twas the crowning cry of a heart's despair, and it thrilled you through
and through --
"I guess I'll make it a spread misere", said Dangerous Dan McGrew.
The music almost died away ... then it burst like a pent-up flood;
And it seemed to say, "Repay, repay," and my eyes were blind with blood.
The thought came back of an ancient wrong, and it stung like a frozen lash,
And the lust awoke to kill, to kill ... then the music stopped with a crash,
And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned in a most peculiar way;
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
Then his lips went in in a kind of grin, and he spoke, and his voice was calm,
And "Boys," says he, "you don't know me, and none of you care a damn;
But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I'll bet my poke
they're true,
That one of you is a hound of hell. . .and that one is Dan McGrew."
Then I ducked my head, and the lights went out, and two guns blazed
in the dark,
And a woman screamed, and the lights went up, and two men lay stiff and stark.
Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead, was Dangerous Dan McGrew,
While the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast of the lady that's
known as Lou.
These are the simple facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know.
They say that the stranger was crazed with "hooch," and I'm not denying
it's so.
I'm not so wise as the lawyer guys, but strictly between us two --
The woman that kissed him and -- pinched his poke -- was the lady that's
known as Lou.

Note: 'Spread misere': also 'open misere', a bid in some whist derivatives
involving the bidding player playing for no tricks (misere) and placing
his cards face up on the table (spread).
As I mentioned a couple of poems ago, frontiers tend to produce some highly
vivid and colourful stories and narrative poems, and Service's tales of the
Yukon are surely among the best of the breed. An often overlooked
'character' in these tales is the land itself - Kipling's India, Paterson's
Australia, Twain's Mississippi all have an unmistakable presence that
permeates the tales and moulds and shapes their characters. Service, perhaps
more so than any of them, makes this explicit in his poems:
Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear;
With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,
A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;
While high overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights swept in bars?
--
Then you've a hunch what the music meant. . . hunger and night and the stars.
and it is this, more than anything else, that draws me to reread them time
and again, seldom without a shiver.
Today's tale of mysterious strangers, calculating women, and sudden violence
seems perfectly natural in its setting, and Service's verse hews and shapes
it without robbing it of any of its raw intensity. Definitely an immortal
poem - perhaps even more so than the haunting "Cremation of Sam McGee".
martin
Links:
See Poem #781 for a collection of Service-related sites - I couldn't find
anything interesting specifically related to today's poem.
The current theme:
[broken link] http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/collections/58.html

My uncle in Ireland had a prologue to this poem. I could never find outwhether it was his own composition or whether it was Service's or hadbeen added by some music hall reciter. I can't recall the words but itwent something like this, in a kind of blank verse:

"Imagine a busy saloon in a seaside town somewhere in the south ofAmerica. The bar is kept by a beautiful woman, helped by her husband,who also plays music on the barroom piano.

One evening, a whaling ship docks at the port and the crew with theirburly captain spend the evening drinking at the bar. The ship leaveswith first tide the next morning; the beautiful woman who kept the baralso disappears.

What follows is a sequel

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up ..."

Anyone help with this?

Incidentally, talking about this uncle. He had a lifelong stammer, butonce he started on a recitation, he went through it without a sign ofstammering.

My grandfather was one of the hopefuls at the Yukon gold rush. Although I wasonly about nine years old when he died, I remember quite well his tales ofhis life there. He could recite many of Robert Service's poems. Once, afterreciting The Shooting of Dan McGrew, he told me that incidents of suddenviolence weren't all that rare during the time he spent in the Yukon. "Therewere a lot of strange people up there," he said. "If the lights went out,everyone hit the floor."

By the time I was ten years old, I could recite most of The Cremation of SamMcGee. Yet that poem seemed rather tame to me compared to the story of thefuneral of one of my grandfather's fellow miners. It seems that the gentlemandied and his body froze solid in the Yukon cold. My grandfather and hisbuddies, while digging the grave and passing around the whiskey bottle,decided that lining the grave with pine boughs would be a nice gesture. Intheir zeal, they filled almost the entire grave with branches. When theylowered the frozen body of their friend into his grave, there wasn't quiteenough room for it. With a little discussion and a lot more whiskey, theyarrived at the obvious solution: They took turns jumping up and down on thefrozen corpse in an attempt to fine tune the fit. I remember, after hearingmy grandfather tell this story, asking him, "Did it work?" My serious,hard-working, non-drinking grandfather answered, "Who knows?" and burst outlaughing.

My Father was a great admirer of Robert Service's poems and I gave him thebook of poems on his retirement date, 1968. Dad memorized this poem as one ofhis favorites and used to recite it to us, his family of three boys, andanyone else that wanted to listen. As we grew older, Dad became the "Patriarch"of an annual fishing trip to Flaming Gorge Reservoir by himself, his threesons, three cousins and three family friends. The highlight of the trip was,after a few drinks, Dad would recite this poem do the delight of us andanyone else in the motel area that heard it. I will say that he would recite itwith meaning--wit, seriousness, and matter-of-factly, where needed. Dad diedin 1984 at the age of 85 but our memories of his rendition remain firmly fixedin our memories. There was a parody written to this poem that was quite bawdy, risque,however you want to put it. Suffice it to say it was meant for men's ears only(my mother knew of it, of course) so it also fit in well with a bunch ofguys acting like children again! Dad also knew this by heart and followed theService poem with the parody. We don't know for sure but we believe Dad wrotethe parody himself as he was good at writing the poetry for us kids forschool and a poem to each of us three sons covering the main events of our lives. We all cherish these poems! After our fishing trip last May (2003) when one of our friends recitedfrom memory another poem of Robert Service, The Cremation of Sam McGee, Ireturned to home in California and thought I would do something of the same thisyear. Within a week I had written a poem that more or less ended the saga ofDan McGrew and the parody. This was done mostly at night and then puttingit on the computer either at night or the next morning. Everything seemed toflow without much effort and I know it is not of the quality of Service's ormy Dad's effort but I think it will bring a chuckle to the "gang" while atFlaming Gorge. Sadly, two of my cousins have died in recent years but I haveadded a comment on them in my poem. To me, Robert Service's poems bring to life the good times of thecentury when things were perhaps more hard, but less stressful and fast paced thanlife is today. I believe our younger generation can learn a lot from thesepoems. Thanks for'listening', Gordon Brown

P.S. I just read the comments by Frank O'Shea. The parody of which I spokebegins exactly as he said: " A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in oneof the Malumute Halls while the man at the music box stealthily scratched his- - - - -". Contact with Mr. O'Shea might help to solve our mystery of whowrote the parody and I could send him a copy. It is barnyard humor but good!

I learned Sam McGee back in scout camp in 1955 or so--one of thecoujnselors recited it, and my buddy and became sold, so we went homeand memorized. I also know Dan McGrew, by the bye. I've since recitedone or the other of them about 30 times over the years, most recently ona cruise ship passenger talent night on the way to Alaska--brought downthe house. As a retired English teacher, I have to admit that RWS'spoetry is not tecnically meritorious, but it sure tells a great storyand keeps the audience on tenterhooks. Those who like this sort ofliterature should read 'The Highwayman' (which I also can recite if youwish LOL. Interesting site--just found it while surfing.

I loved the poem. It gripped me when I first read it. Just recently Iwent to a friend's place and an old man who'd said nothing all eveningcame out with the poem. We listened and enjoyed the dramatic way he toldit. And the old man knew every word.Every expression.Cleveland W. Gibsonwriter

Service's description of the cold clear night is strikingly similar toBanjo Paterson's in "The Man from Snowy River".

Paterson's: And down by Kosciusko, where the pine-clad ridges raise Their torn and rugged battlements on high, Where the air is clear as crystal, and the white stars fairly blaze At midnight in the cold and frosty sky,

Compare that to the way Service uses clear light and mountains toevoke loneliness: Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear, And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear; With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold, A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muckcalled gold; While high overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights sweptin bars? -- Then you've a hunch what the music meant. . . hunger and night andthe stars.

I suppose the link between clear skies and cold nights is common toall non-tropical climates.

I once had a copy of the McGrew parody, Which I think was circulated amongthe then all-male student body in the College of Law at the Jesuit-runUniversity of Santa Clara, circa 1954. Most of us were veterans of either WW II orKorea, and such verse was quite popular among ourselves.

I can only remember these fifty years later the segment ". . .And out ofthe night, which was black as a bitch, and in to the din and the smoke . . .,et seq.". As a retired lawyer, amateur American literature buff, andsometimes bar-room poet, I consider the part I elide above to be one of the mostpoetic descriptive passages in all of English poetry. It includes the line"His face was red as a baboon's ass while the passion within him burned., , ," Than which no finer simile exists, in my opinion, in English literature.

There was also a bawdy version of "Sam Mc Gee" but not up to the quality of"McGrew".

As I remember, we first got into this after using a first-year property lawcasebook by Professors Cassner and Leach of the Harvard College of Law, whichrecounted "The Ballad of the Ladies of the Chorus of the Wut-tut-tutReview"and one about a cow named Rose of Alberlone (sp.?). The good Professor'sselections were almost as witty, but of much more delicate language.

If you have access to a copy of "McGrew" I would be extremely grateful,and my postal address would be available, if you prefer. I can assure you ofmy discretion in further promulgation of the material.

I wonder how I would go about getting a copy of the parody on The shooting of Dangerous Dan McGrew. I do not know that much about the working of a computer, but would love to have a copy. I would be willing to buy it. Thanks for any help.

I half remember seeing Service read out his poem 'The shooting of DanMcGrew' and always wondered if it might turn up somewhere for us all tosee. Has anybody ever done a dramatic version of this same poem? Iwondered...Best wishesCleveland W. Gibson

I got here via research into San Francisco beat poet Jack Micheline, whom I always connected to Service because of his (Micheline's) bar room recitations. I wrote a parody of Jack's work to only now realize I couldn't have found a way to praise him more highly.

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I'm surprised to find no explanation of the "Green Stuff" question. It's Absinth, an herbal drug that was added to alcoholic drinks to give an extra kick. It's a common weed in the Bay area of California near where I was stationed at the Naval Hospital. Also called "Anis" The aroma fills the air in the hills of Oakland CA. The drug was added to booze in a particular ritual way that added a rush of its strong aroma to the experience of drinking it. Service was calling up it's reputation for making an alcoholic drink extra powerful in it's tendancy to promote violence in the drinker, and the chemical reaction that is produced in its preparation., which involves a special perferated spoon holding a sugar cube.

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